Eight years ago, Chaltu Emana faced a life-threatening situation during what should have been a joyful day as she welcomed her second child.
At 39 weeks pregnant, Emana’s uterus ruptured, and she feared for both her life and her baby’s. “I thought I was going to die, and I thought the baby was going to die too,” she recalled.
In the midst of the chaos, a nurse named Jenna Perry intervened, recognizing the urgency of the situation. “I just remember thinking, this baby’s not doing well at all, and I need to intervene and we need to get this baby out really really quickly,” Perry said. An emergency C-section saved both Emana and her baby, but in the panic, Emana never learned the name of the nurse who had alerted the doctors.
For years, Emana sought to find the nurse who had been by her side at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas. “Three or four months later, I was like I really need to go back and see the nurse. And that’s when I started looking for her. What was her name?” she said. Despite her efforts, the staff could not identify the nurse. “I kept saying her name was like Gina or something, and they kept saying we don’t know that person,” Emana explained.
Recently, an old photo provided the breakthrough Emana needed. “I saw her face on the background of my baby’s picture, so I was like ok I am going to go back and look for her,” she said. Ironically, Emana had just started working as a nurse at the same hospital, and this summer, she finally reunited with Jenna Perry, the woman who saved her life. “I saw her face; I was like that is her. I couldn’t stop crying,” Emana said.
Perry, who has been a labor and delivery nurse for 23 years, said, “That day and that story has stuck with me for the last 8 years. It was honestly one of the most incredible moments I have had in my career.”
The baby Emana once feared she would lose, Aaron, is now eight years old, smart, strong, and full of life. The reunion between the two nurses forged a bond eight years in the making. Emana expressed her gratitude, saying, “As a nurse, you really need to know, you’re doing things for a patient, it could be simple, but it could be life changing. Seeing her and saying thank you is all I wanted, and it happened finally.”